The Council Has Spoken! Our Watcher’s Council Results

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match up.

“A world that did not lift a finger when Hitler was wiping out six million Jewish men, women, and children is now saying that the Jewish state of Israel will not survive if it does not come to terms with the Arabs. My feeling is that no one in this universe has the right and the competence to tell Israel what it has to do in order to survive. On the contrary, it is Israel that can tell us what to do. It can tell us that we shall not survive if we do not cultivate and celebrate courage, if we coddle traitors and deserters, bargain with terrorists, court enemies, and scorn friends. “ – Eric Hoffer

“Look at the past eight years. During those eight years, there was no space between us and Israel, and what did we get from that? When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states.” – President Barack Hussein Obama, 2009

This week’s winning essay is Joshuapundit’sSo, Why Not Dump Israel ? After all, even a significant number of American Jews (including a presidential candidate) don’t back Israel any more. Wouldn’t it be better for America if we just ended all ties with the Jewish State? I took an honest look at the question, and present a few little known facts that might shed some light on whether the America-Israel alliance is a benefit or a burden…and also a look at how many Israelis see the Two State Solution. Here’s a slice:

Why all this fuss about Israel? Aren’t they nothing but trouble for America?

To hear a lot of what’s going around these days, Israel is at the heart of the problems we have with the Muslim world, and things would be just fine if we became more ‘balanced’…or translated, became more pro-Arab and curtailed our support for those pushy, stubborn Jews. Besides, aren’t they an ungrateful ally? Certainly President Obama, John Kerry and a lot of others in Washington say things like that all the time. Although they dress it up a little, that is essentially what they believe. Israel is a problem, not an asset.

ISIS, terrorism against the west, Iran’s belligerent behavior, the problems in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and especially with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are all mostly Israel’s fault. And murdering Jews is just a natural reaction to ‘occupation’, although no one’s country is being occupied in any usual sense of the way the word is used. Gaza is an example of how bizarre and distorted the idea of Israel’s ‘occupation has become.

Israel pulled every Jew living in the area out, with effusive guarantees from the EU ,UN and the Bush Administration that it would never be allowed to become a security problem for Israel. Yet the Jewish State is still regularly referred to as ‘the occupying power’ by the UN and the so-called International Community.And that ‘occupation is based on Israel’s blockade of Hamas that even the UN called fully legal, a blockade that was only necessary because of the failure by these other entities to honor those those same security guarantees made to Israel to get them to pull out of Gaza in the first place! You literally can’t make this stuff up.

Just as an aside, one reason many Israelis aren’t the least bit interested in giving up any more land no matter what the UN or anyone else says is precisely because of what happened with Gaza. Why make themselves even more vulnerable for guarantees that won’t be kept and demonization as ‘occupiers’ even after they’ve left?

Another homily heard often is that Israel can’t survive unless it retreats to what people call the ‘pre-1967′ borders.’ That seems fair, doesn’t it?

What isn’t said much is that those were never borders at all, but simply cease fire lines from 1948 between countries still then in a state of war. Going back to those ceasefire lines would push Israel into an indefensible enclave,turn half a million its citizens into refugees, divide its capitol and make the Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem and Hebron off limits forever to Jews. And it would also give up high ground within easy missile and artillery range of its airports and the country’s most populated areas to people who make no mistake about being genocidal when it comes to Israel’s Jews.

That, after all is what President Obama, the UN and the EU are saying with their insistence on a two state solution based on those 1948 ceasefire lines, and it actually appears that the Obama Administration is willing to sign on to or at least abstain from vetoing a new UN resolution sponsored by France to insist on exactly that.

But hey, isn’t that Israel’s problem, not ours? So what?

Let’s take an objective look. What difference does what happens to Israel make to us here in America? Why should we care? Why is what happens to Israel important to the US? If Israel somehow ceased to exist, would it matter to America? I mean, we give them all that aid money. Why not spend it at home? And who knows, maybe if we weren’t giving all that aid to Israel, we might not have all those problems with the Muslim world!

There’s a very well organized, well funded effort going on now to convince people of exactly that. Could they be right? Let’s find out.

And to do that, let’s put aside any of those slooshy considerations of fairness, justice, religion or humanitarian principles and go for the cold, hard, self-serving realpolitik mindset to find out if what happens to Israel is important to the US.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Daniel Greenfield in the Canada Free Press with Daniel Greenfield/Canada Free Press–Castro’s American Victimssubmitted by Bookworm Room . With President Barack Hussein Obama doing everything he possibly can to appease the Castro Brothers, Greenfield reminds us of a few things this president and his sycophants would prefer were forgotten and swept under the rug.

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. and every Tuesday morning, when we reveal the weeks’ nominees for Weasel of the Week!

And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it...or any of the other fantabulous Watcher’s Council content.

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